The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

book data

1,493 ratings, 3.75 average rating, 314 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		21%
4		41%
3		28%
2		6%
1		1%

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published

September 15th 2005 (first published 1995) by Tor Books

binding

Paperback, 368 pages

characters

Andrew Westley, Kate Angier, Rupert Angier, Alfred Borden, ...more

setting

Portugal

literary awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize, World Fantasy Award

isbn

0312858868 (isbn13: 9780312858865)

description

The Washington Post called this "a dizzying magic show of a novel, chock-a-block with all the props of Victorian sensation fiction: seances, mult...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,291)

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12/11/07

Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0575075805)

bookshelves: british, film, magic-realism, modern-fiction, pseudo-nineteenth-century

Read in December, 2007

Like many readers, I came to this book after seeing the excellent 2006 film based on it. Like many other readers, I ended up preferring the film to the book as the film is a lot more tightly woven and provides better motivations for the characters' actions.

The story, for those of you who don't know, centres on two Victorian magicians who strike up a feud and spend the next twenty years sabotaging each other's shows and trying to outperform each other, each coming up with a spectacula...more Like many readers, I came to this book after seeing the excellent 2006 film based on it. Like many other readers, I ended up preferring the film to the book as the film is a lot more tightly woven and provides better motivations for the characters' actions.

The story, for those of you who don't know, centres on two Victorian magicians who strike up a feud and spend the next twenty years sabotaging each other's shows and trying to outperform each other, each coming up with a spectacular disappearing act to which the other wants to find out the secret. The obsessive nature of the two men's relationship is drawn well, first from the working-class Borden's point of view, then from the aristocratic Angier's. Their feud isn't motivated particularly well, but that might be the point of the story; feuds often arise over trivial matters. At any rate, the resulting obsession and its destructive effects are painted vividly. The magic tricks are also presented well, although the words describing them of necessity lack the powerful quality of the film's images of them. And finally, there's a nice sense of mystery surrounding some of the tricks (although again, less so than in the film), bringing to mind the thrilling sensation fiction of the Victorian era, which I happen to love.

Sadly, though, the book has many shortcomings. For one thing, Borden's and Angier's diaries are unconvincing as Victorian documents; the language used is far too modern. Secondly, both of the protagonists are fairly unlikeable characters. I realise it's hard to write a story about an obsessive feud without making the characters quite unlikeable, but still, I think Priest could have done a better job on these two. Thirdly, Angier's part of the story is a bit of a drag. Some judicious editing would have been welcome here.

What really sets the book apart from the film, however, is the fact that Priest saw fit to include a modern frame in which the reader is introduced to two of the magicians' present-day descendants, whose lives are still being affected by the ancient feud. At first I hated the modern frame (which the filmmakers wisely left out), thinking it detracted from the main story. Towards the end I came to appreciate it. I actually quite liked the ending, which is spectacularly sci-fi-ish and gothic. It rather stands out from the rest of the book (which is fairly realistic), and as such could be said to be out of out of character, but as far as I'm concerned, it works. I wish the rest of the book were equally spectacular.

I'd give the book 3.5 stars if I could, but in the absence of half stars, I'm going to be tough and give it 3.(less)

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08/24/08

Ellen rated it:

bookshelves: library-books, modern-fiction

Read in February, 2007

It actually took me quite a long time to read this one, and while I largely enjoyed it, I can't help wondering some things. My suspicion is that I was sometimes uninspired to keep reading because the pacing was a bit slower than the movie. Connected to that, I kept wondering over and over again what it would have been like to read the book without knowing the big twist at the end. There were clues, certainly, and while it wasn't spelled out during Borden's portion of the narrative, I wondered wh...more

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1 comment

06/06/07

Audra rated it:

(review of isbn 0765356171)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who enjoys mysteries with a touch of magic, science fiction, and bit of soft horror too.

A suspenseful and gripping story, Christopher Priest demonstrates his storytelling skill in this compelling tale of two turn-of-the-century competing British stage magicians and their feud that trickles down through their descendants. A present day young man unexepctedly finds out that he is a descendant of one of the magicians, and the reader follows his journey of reading their old diaries, learning of their lives, secrets, the feud, and how it so directly affects him (the present day young ma...more

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04/07/08

Missorli2 rated it:

bookshelves: sci-fi

I really liked the movie, and when I found out there was a book, I decided to read it. So far it's ok, but way different from the movie (which doesn't surprise me). I'll update later as I read it.

It's taken me a while to read it because I leave it at work and read it on my breaks. It has been really good so far, and the basic plot is similar to the movie. I'm only about half way through, but it's very good.

After finishing it, I've decided the movie is better. The boo...more

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07/13/07

Russ rated it:

(review of isbn 0765356171)

bookshelves: 2007, fantasy, favoritebooks, novel, thriller

Read in April, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone looking for something interesting

You know the kind of book that starts out very wordy and slow, and then *boom* you get a scene that makes you want to read the rest of it right now, just to find out what happens? This is that kind of book.

The setting is in present day, with descendants of two famous magicians trying to figure out what happened to their great-grandfathers. They do this by reading the journals/books of their forefathers. What they find out will really amaze you.

This book will keep you g...more

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08/26/07

Belinda rated it:

(review of isbn 0575075805)

bookshelves: intrigue, mystery, spooky

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2007

Really more of a 4.5, but the very, very end left me enough at a loss that I rounded down instead of up. This is one page-turner of a debut novel. I was reading it concurrently with Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and needless to say, this one went much more quickly.

The main thing I want to say about this novel is that, if you've seen the movie based on it, you do NOT know the story of this novel. I did enjoy the film, but it stands on its own apart from the book, in many mor...more

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09/26/07

Mary Catherine rated it:

This is the book that last year's movie of the same name (with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) was based on. It features two rival magicians who fight for supremacy and who try to come up with the ultimate illusion.

Having seen the movie before I read the book, I think the movie is better solely because magic is a visual medium and it loses some power when it's just being described on the page. There are some pretty major plot differences between the book and the movie and I like t...more

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04/28/09

Immen added it

Read in April, 2009

My view of this book is deeply colored by the movie, which I watched two or three times and greatly enjoyed. The book has a different emphasis; there's this frame story which sets up, right from the start, a primary theme of twins and doppelgangers, which changes the game very much. (The movie, in my view, was more about the batshit things that driven people are driven to do, with homg twin shenanigans as a secondary theme.)

The frame story asks a question, which clearly isn't going t...more My view of this book is deeply colored by the movie, which I watched two or three times and greatly enjoyed. The book has a different emphasis; there's this frame story which sets up, right from the start, a primary theme of twins and doppelgangers, which changes the game very much. (The movie, in my view, was more about the batshit things that driven people are driven to do, with homg twin shenanigans as a secondary theme.)

The frame story asks a question, which clearly isn't going to be answered until after the entire Angiers-Borden saga ends and we pop back out to the frame story, so I read this book in a frenzy of MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, racing to the finish line. I definitely want to give this a more leisurely re-read. This time through I mostly catalogued the divergences from the movie.

The frame really didn't do it for me, but the characters occasionally had interesting thoughts in that timeline. I rolled my eyes at the device of the journal. It wasn't quite adroit enough to not be a little irritating (I think I just found the one sentence reason why <cite>Bridge of Birds</cite> didn't work for me), and there was this single use of the plural pronoun which I didn't understand. But the concept was definitely charming, and I do want to go back and untangle the threads. I was going too fast to sort out all the motivations, and these are characters which can stand up to a bit of a scrunity.

I adored Angiers, the dumb rich kid who actually has no sense of magic at all, but becomes madly successful through hard work, extensive cheat-sheeting, and the mentorship of his low-class girlfriend. There was a perfect hilarious broken-science moment when Tesla accepted the job from Angiers. The Angiers-Borden dynamic is weird in the book; the book centers more around Angiers, with Borden being this insane life-changing comet that keeps flying into his orbit, while the movie balanced it out into a binary system of mutual destructive influence.

It wasn't a beautiful book, but it was a thinky book, and it made me happy.(less)

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01/19/09

Rina rated it:

(review of isbn 3453522117)

Read in January, 2009

This is one of the rare cases in which I enjoyed the movie far more than the book.

Christopher Priest made an interesting approach by telling the story from four (or let's say five) different perspectives, but in the end this also is the biggest weakness of the book. It seems like the writing style doesn't change much although the story is narrated by a different character, and after all I didn't care about anybody in the book. The characters just didn't get me because they spent most...more

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04/26/09

Chad rated it:

bookshelves: 2009, fiction

Read in May, 2009

I began reading "The Prestige" not having seen the film version, but I had heard whisperings about the secret twist ending that apparently went over well with movie-going audiences. I didn't know the specifics really, just enough to start formulating a hypothesis to the story's mystery after the first few dozen (or so) pages. As the narration of the novel's first two narrators began to gel somewhat with my theory, I immediatley began to worry that in hearing what I'd heard, the book w...more

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07/01/09

Alex rated it:

I remember the first time I read this hating it for the "Wooooo! TESLA! He can do anything!" bit, which I realize really wasn't the point. However, having just reread it it turns out that this is simply a book I don't care for. He does get points for the ways that he really works a bunch of interesting ideas, especially first person narrative (for me, but I just wrote out a list of the interesting ideas I saw in the book and it got sort of long). Maybe that's the problem with the b...more

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03/24/09

Greg rated it:

bookshelves: novel

Read in April, 2009

Let me first say that the books (as often happens) is different that the movie. The main idea is the basically the same, but most of the rivalry between the two magicians takes place in a different way that it does in the movie.

For me, this was an excellent book. Having said that, I also know that it's not for everyone. I would say that it's part magic theory, part character novel, and part science fiction. If you've seen the movie, you know the science fiction part and I would s...more

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06/24/09

Jake rated it:

bookshelves: science-fiction

Read in June, 2009

Excellent novel in its own right, and a must-read if you loved the movie. The book is essentially the same in all the ways that matter-- characters, setting, major plot points-- but it contains one or two differences that add depth and poignancy to the story. You learn more, for instance, about the relationship between the Borden twins, as well as Angiers' inward experience of using Tesla's device. In a number of ways the movie is superior to the book-- as in all great adaptions, the screenwr...more

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01/18/09

Sam rated it:

bookshelves: books-that-became-movies

Read in February, 2009

recommended to Sam by: myself
recommends it for: people who liked the movie and enjoy a good brain-bender

This book is one of the rare examples in which the film adaptation is superior to the novel on which it is based.

The Prestige, in both its forms of entertainment, is an interesting and well-thought out story. It follows two magicians on their respective rises to fame and their intense feud with each other. Nearing the conclusion of each, one of Rupert/Robert Angier's tricks is interfered with in some way and influences the end of the story in a bizarre twist. While this may be t...more This book is one of the rare examples in which the film adaptation is superior to the novel on which it is based.

The Prestige, in both its forms of entertainment, is an interesting and well-thought out story. It follows two magicians on their respective rises to fame and their intense feud with each other. Nearing the conclusion of each, one of Rupert/Robert Angier's tricks is interfered with in some way and influences the end of the story in a bizarre twist. While this may be the constant between the two forms of the tale, everything in the middle is most definitely not.

The film does a much better job of adhering a realistic quality to the characters, especially their motivations and actions. It also pulls off the mind-boggling central event without making it too confusing. While faltering slightly on the hope of achieving total understanding from the audience, it effectively ties back to the idea of the anatomy of a magic trick.

The book, on the other hand, characterizes certain people differently, bears an obvious difference from the film in many occasions, and has trouble breaking the confusion that ensues after IN A FLASH/THE REAL TRANSPORTED MAN goes awry.

Both jump around in time, but do so in different ways. Additionally, the film removes the subplot that the book begins and ends with (which I felt was unnecessary and only spurred the confusion onward). In all, the movie requires less mental 'backtracking' and relaxes the viewer more than the book, which forces the reader to ponder the plot more. This may not be a bad thing for some readers, but it is a potential barrier for others.

I apologize if this review is not as in-depth as it should be. The Prestige, while a good read in its own regard, has a great number of reasons to be compared to its cinematic counterpart. Due to the heavy plot and thick mystery, it is a difficult work to describe and supply praise or dislike to. What I can say, however, is that watching the wonderful 2006 movie (starring great actors and directed by the excellent Christopher Nolan) prior to reading the book allows for a better read and better understanding of the source material.

3.75 stars out of 5.(less)

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01/02/09

TonyAlmeida rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: all-books, authors-uk, fiction, language-portuguese, libraries, read-2009, wished

Read in January, 2009

In Portugal the book's title changed as magic. Well, not exactly. It was marketing instead. Initially it was sold under the title "O Prestígio" (The Prestige), just like the original edition of the book. Later, its title was changed to "O Terceiro Passo" (The third step), as in the portuguese title for the movie based on this book.

Now, about the book. I'm a magic lover and the central theme of this book caught my attention. I enjoyed very much the book at the beg...more

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12/10/08

Whitelady3 rated it:

(review of other edition)

bookshelves: not-own, portuguese

Read in January, 2009

I have to say that magic never really got me though I like to see illusionists doing their tricks now and then. This book, as well as the recent movie with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale (which I haven't seen yet), never had my curiosity or interest. I even think I would never read this book if I hadn't got it through BookMooch or if there wasn't a show on Portuguese television about magic.

I enjoyed the reading but still this story might work better as a movie, since it has so many ...more

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04/06/09

Janolyn rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2009

This is one of the few books that I have to admit that I thought the movie was better. I enjoyed reading the book but the extra layer of current day characters researching the lives of the magicians seemed bulky and unneccessary. Maybe it was because I had seen the movie but the primary characters were fascinating enough. Interesting historical setting with both a 'normal' twist and a sci-fi twist. Every sci-fi book/movie has 'holes' in its logic but in this case I thought the movie did a better...more

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03/22/09

CD rated it:

bookshelves: crime, fantasy, favorite, fiction, horror, suspense

Read in April, 2009

An eyeblink away from 5 stars and joining the list of my 'all-time-favorites'.

My belief is that some books are just too good a story to be easily told and even a few minor flaws leaves the reader needing a bit more than was delivered. The Prestige is very close to this group.

Combing many of my favorite leisure time reading elements - Gothic/Victorian/Edwardian backdrops, English setting and storyline, the hint of science gone astray, and a few historic figures wrapped in...more

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12/27/08

Isil rated it:

(review of isbn 2070340775)

bookshelves: angleterre, science-fiction, xxe

Read in December, 2008

La narration suit les points de vue successifs de différents personnages. On commence à l’époque contemporaine avec Andrew Westley, qui découvre le passé de sa famille biologique. C’est le récit de Kate Angier qui commence à mettre en place l’intrigue mais c’est la suite, avec les journaux intimes d’Alfred Borden puis de Rupert Angier qui deviennent absolument passionnants. Ils se répondent parfaitement puisqu’il s’agit de deux points de vue différents d’une même hi...more

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02/26/09

Jess rated it:

Read in July, 2006

I should really have this on my "reading" shelf, because there is almost never a time I'm not reading or re-reading this book.

This is absolutely one of my desert island books, and quite possibly one of my favorites. Combine magic, intrigue, diaries, wives & mistresses, twins & doubles, and then span decades, and you'll have this book. Bought it for a cruise & did not put it down till I was done--and then read it again before I got back off. I've read it more times than I ca...more

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